Thanks to So Many Who Helped Secure Reinstatement of Charges Against Zuma

You know people, I am still thinking about the meaning of the reinstatement of the charges, no matter whether No 1 thinks he can still delay the inevitable… writes Marianne Thamm.

There are so many to thank for it and it has been a long road. On that journey we have begun to shape who we are and what we can be.

We must thank good people in the NPA (it does not just consist of the public faces with eyebrows that diminish it) and the judiciary (read the judgment), the Jeremy Vearies, the ordinary SAPS members we see every day at work, the Democratic Alliance deserves to claim this in part too, a big part… but also the young leaders Mmusi Maimane, Julius Malema, Mbuyseni Ndlozi, Phumzile van Damme, Nkululeko Hlengwa, Liezl van Der Merwe are just a few who immediately spring to mind and who I have seen in action either in parliament or in the committees.

The Vyjtie Mentors, the Makhosi Khozas. Then the media, the SABC 8, amaBhungane and all the other investigative journalists on radio, in print, online, on TV, on YouTube….

Then there is the Helen Suzman Foundation, Black Sash, Freedom Under Law, Outa, Save South Africa, CASAC, Section 27, Judges Matter… (add here many I might have overlooked).

The Neighborhood watches on the Cape Flats, the community groups, the whistleblowers, the workers…

Then the writers, so many talented mind-expanding young writers… I could go on.

There is much to be proud of and that is what we want our leaders of future to be – Proud of us…. Able to see just how resilient and remarkable we are…. Repair us, give us hope, take the next step.

My comrades in the ANC who are fighting a brave but perhaps hopeless fight, go to the side of light…. It has been devastating and painful for you…. and that is why you should try to fix it… Only then might you have a future as leaders but perhaps first as opposition…. your choice.

By Marianne Thamm, republished here with her kind permission. Marianne Thamm’s new “memoir of sorts” is out now – “Hitler, Verwoerd, Mandela and me”:
www.tafelberg.com/books/19670